The New Floodgates of the Mind

I don’t know what’s up with me and this Domestic Attack I’ve got. I’m wondering if it’s another form of that so-called Industrial Disease (and in my head I hear the twang from Dire Straits). I woke up at 8am again. That seems to be my “sleep-in” time. If only I woke up feeling refreshed instead of feeling like a rhino-stampede survivor. At the very least, it would be nice to wake up without a headache.

Anyhow, I got up and almost convinced myself to put off all further housework until some other day/week/month. Almost. Before I knew it, I found myself vacuuming the entire house. And as soon as I finished that, I fixed the flat on my speeder, adjusted the rim, and once again replaced the lightbulb in the garage – finally deciding to remove the entire fixture to get at the problem. You’d think I’d stop there right? Nope. Once again, before I knew it, I was out in the front mowing the lawn. It’s like my brain had no control of my body. Of course, with the heat out there, I soon found myself with no shirt on doing the Suburban Rhumba.

Yes, I admit to feeling a wave of satisfaction when I finished. Just as I admit to feeling the pain in my shoulders from the sunburn. Sigh. But I will also admit that there is just nothing that feels as good as stepping under a cold shower when you’re drenched in hot sweat and just feel all that steam leave your body. Ooohhhmmm…

And thus, refreshed, I poured myself a Brisk into a frozen mug, added some cubes, and went outside to sweat properly: sitting on the deck writing up an article for the next Comicopia. Again, satisfying to finish. And this leaves me free to put together another Fast Fiction piece.

I’ll let it rummage around in my brain first. I feel the need for some more refreshment. 🙂

(“two men say they’re Jesus – one of them must be wrong – there’s a protest singer he’s singing a protest song…”)

It took much longer for the bloody tylenol to kick in than I had expected. I got tired of waiting so I chased it down. Now I don’t feel my head. Well, I can barely feel my arms either so what the heck 🙂

It’s Saturday. Warren’s sick so Fast Fiction Friday couldn’t be fully completed. I’ll post up my piece next week or so. At any rate he did say to keep writing so what the hell.

Here’s my Tylenol/Tornado Sangrila inspired piece for Saturday. I call it Ken Waits

Man, I’m exhausted tonight. After all that crazy running around the kids and I did all week, we were finally able to sleep in past 6am this morning. I wish I could say I slept well but the truth is that even though I got out of bed at 8am, I tossed and turned all night. And then, I got cracking on the housework that needed to be done. Honestly, it needed to be done. Wash/ dry/ fold/ put away laundry, seal up some holes outside where some wasps had decided to nest in, weed out the yard, clear up in the basement a little and put up some shelving, try to get the light bulb working again in the garage (it’s like a 10foot high ceiling), pick up, make lunch, make supper, get the kids washed and ready for bed…

is it any wonder I’ve got another headache tonight?

Worst part of it all? Once the kids are in bed and I’ll be able to have some alone time… the only thing I’ll want to do is get some sleep… how pathetic is that?

I spoke with Chantale last night before bed. It’s quite nice to know that even after 5 years of being together, we have no trouble spending a lot of time talking on the phone. Whenever we’re forced to be apart for some time, It almost feels like it did in the early days when we would just talk very late into the night (or early morning as the case often was) but with an extra depth of emotion. Nice, comforting, and filled with warmth. Again, it’s amazing feeling to know that with every day that passes, we get closer and closer… 🙂

Took an on-line IQ test from the IQ Test Labs over at http://www.intelligencetest.com/test/signupuser.php It claims that I am rated Above Average at 127 and scored higher than 98% of the folks who’ve already taken the test. The interesting point was that my strength is Verbal and my weakness is Mathematics. Heh. True true. 🙂 If you plan to take the test, make sure you’re not disturbed for 15 minutes as the clock begins when you click start and the test is supposedly set up to only run once per workstation.

In other news… I’m exhausted and look forward to sleeping beyond 6am this weekend… And now, time for some coffee… dark roast blend 🙂

(*I’m also tired of listening to the woman in the cubicle next to me constantly complain about the work she has to do and refuses to do…)

Walked into Metro Video today just to kill some time after I went to visit my sister-in-law at La Vie en Rose during lunch. As I strolled through the aisles reviewing the movies available and the costs per movie, I had to shake my head at how expensive some of them are and wonder what an incredible market we live in that makes people want to own so many movies. At the same time, a part of me is very happy that they are so expensive because it honestly keeps me from going buy-crazy like I did in the past with VHS movies.

Heck, at one point in time I had close to 500 movies on video. Even if you were to average them at $15 a pop (when the range really is closer to $20) you come to $7,500. THAT is a hell of a lot of money. Holy shit. Add the 15% tax to it and it just makes you want to jump off a cliff. Anyhow, I’m (luckily) out of that mentality these days. As much as there are movies I really would like to own, unless I truly love the movie, I do not want to spend money on it. In that way I’ve got a small collection of movies on DVD. Personally, the beauty of DVDs for me are threefold: clarity of image, WIDEscreen format, and Favorite TV Shows!!

So, strolling along, I began thinking about which TV series I would spend money on. I do own the Mad About You series (a favorite of Chantale’s) and Babylon 5 (nuff said!). As much as I would really like to get the Star Trek Next Generation series (a big favorite of Chantale’s as well as mine) the fact that there are so many seasons and each box set is so expensive (close to $150) keeps them at arm’s length. I do know that the Spider-Man Classic cartoons from the 60’s are supposed to be released soon and I’m very tempted considering how much that show meant to me and my childhood. There is one other series I’ve been desperately waiting for: Quantum Leap. This was what I felt to be the first truly intelligent sci-fi show on television and I was hooked from the first time I saw it. I’ve got the novels, I’ve got the comic books, and I’ve even got a ton of shows scattered on various video tapes. I knew it was only a matter of time. I just didn’t like that it was turning into a matter of years. But, lo and behold, as I stopped looking for it, Quantum Leap Season 1 finally came out (with Season 2 scheduled for October 26th!!)! And, just like that, it’s now in my possession! 🙂 Of course, I’ll only start watching it after I pick up Chantale from up north but at least it’s in my hands! 🙂 Ah, Mike is happy again 🙂

Other shows which could fall in my zone should they one day come out: China Beach, Space: Above and Beyond, Welcome Back Kotter, The Pretender, Prophet, (list to expand once my brain refocuses… :> )

Shows I would like to have: Lost in Space, CSI, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, V, Gilligan’s Island, Johnny Bravo, Lucky Luke, Scooby Do Mysteries, Reboot

I really don’t know “where” I am today. My mind seems to be adrift much, much more than usual. Heck, it was weird enough walking into work at 7:30 this morning, but to find that muadib_ca was already at his desk… In fact for a minute there I thought my watch had stopped from last night. But no, he had come in early this morning and we were both early enough to take advantage of the early bird special at Chez Cora’s. Mmm. Blueberry Crepes and coffee for breakfast. Good deal 🙂

Spoke with Chantale last night. She’s doing good and resting well. She made me laugh telling me a story about how Casey seems confused at not having me around and that at night she had started whining softly while walking around the bed as though she were looking for me 🙂 Hump Day today and before you know it, next week will be here bringing me closer to driving back up for the weekend…

For now, the evenings/mornings are disappearing quickly although the actual work days themselves are dragging on… waay too slowly… sigh. But I’ll tell you something I just never tire of: checking up on the kids and watching them sleeping so soundly and snuggly in their beds before I call it a night myself. There’s just a wonderful, overpowering sense of niceness/ happiness/ warmth/ and just plain “right”ness to having them in the house that I almost can’t describe…

Before I go, and because I haven’t done this in a while, here’s another quote:

Non c’e deserto peggiore che una vita senza amici.
There is no desert more arid than a life without friends
– B. Gracian

Mmm… lunch 🙂

Bad part of kids staying with my folks: 6am comes WAY too fast. We’re all exhausted.

Good part of kids staying with my folks: Mom insists on making me a lunch every day. This way she’s positive I’m actually eating during lunch (as opposed to 80% of the time when I’ll just have a coffee… 🙂 ) Oh it tastes so good… I feel like I’m back in high-school… 🙂 Mmmm…. paninis…. 🙂

James’ game last night was the first time his coaches had to experience some parental heckling. Well, I can’t say they HAD to, but they definitely did. And I felt both sorry for them and embarrased to be a parent.

See, I spend each game at the fence next to the team bench wherein I can confer with the coaches and be an extra pair of eyes for them as they can’t always be looking at the entire field when concentrating on a couple of kids. Thus, I’m privy to their thoughts and reasonings. The other parents, however, sit on the benches where their only concerns are their kids and the kids of those sitting around them. They’re not as interested in the kids being trained as they are in them hitting or winning.

Anyhow, last night, nobody was in proper form. Maybe it was the heat and humidity, maybe it was something else. The result was that they just weren’t playing as well as they could and should. In fact, it was downright discouraging how uninspired they were. It got to the point that one coach said how with the complete disinterest they were showing, they almost didn’t deserve to win (compared to the other team who were whooping it up non-stop and really playing “ball”). You know what? I agreed with him. The other parents, of course, didn’t, and shot back a few comments. The only thing this did was insult and upset them. The result? One of the three coaches was so angry that he decided he had had enough. He told me he won’t be at the game on Wednesday as he hastily packed up the equipment at the end of the game.

The team did end up winning (9-8 as the game was stopped once the tie-breaking score came in during the last inning) but I felt it to have been bittersweet. Out of the three coaches, he was the one who spent the most time pumping up the kids and teaching them how to play properly (the other two coaches have different strengths). If he really does walk away now, it will be a bloody shame. Made worse by the fact that those in the stands don’t even realize what he does and how much time and energy he’s already put in for the kids.

…some kids’s parents… (sad shaking of head)

I was listening to a snippet of The Donald this morning. His pearl of wisdom for today was that in order to not be overwhelmed by the insane amount of information available in the world, to only focus on the part that deals with the top 20% of your priorities. I found that interesting in two ways. First, in my current position as a coordinator. My team is responsible for over 40 different applications running on various platforms, many of them critical. Obviously, I can’t have one or even two persons responsible for the entire list and thus have the team broken down by expertise and categories with a lot of backup support and x-training to keep everyone fresh. That makes sense and allows you to spread your support factor risk over the entire team. By that same token, and the part which sometimes bothers me, I can’t be able to intimately know each of those applications on top of my other administrative tasks/ duties. That’s nigh-impossible unless I were to put in 80+ hour weeks! And thus, I have to concentrate my knowledge/efforts on understanding the overviews of the apps plus how they interact and the platforms they affect. And to be on the safe side, I also keep abreast of which servers the critical apps are on. It sometimes bothers me to not know enough about all the apps but I also know it’s not do-able.

On the second interesting part, I think about the time spent on hobbies and such. Perhaps that 20% rule also applies to focusing on the top 20% of what’s important in your life. Right now, to me, that’s been and continues to be my family. I tend to focus on my wife and kids to the utmost of my time. After that comes the upkeep of my home, staying in touch with my family, reading, and writing. That, more than anything, explains why as much as I need to write, I’m not making a full-time career out of it. As much as I’m obsessed with writing and creating, I’m much more obsessed with my wife and kids. I can live without writing, I can’t live without them. But, and this is where it gets tricky, am I giving so much of my time to them that I’m letting that other creative part of me wither? Ah, sometimes I do believe I am. Other times I’m convinced I’m not and that I don’t have the urge, the muse, egging me on. However, I am making a more concentrated effort into addressing all that and making time to keep that flame going. Since summer seems the best time to do this in, we’ll have to see how it continues to develop…

Well, today marks the first day of a new weekly routine: getting up at 6am, leaving at 6:30am to drive the kids to my parents’ and then driving to the metro to get in to work before 8am. Leave at 4pm to pick up the kids, have a quick bite, and then drive back home (except for tonight and wednesday night when we drive to Laval for James’ baseball games).

Saturday morning Chantale and I drove Casey to the vet to get her stitches removed. All went well except for some reason she kept getting sick in the car on the way over there. Chantale ended up holding her in her lap for the entire 5 hour drive up to Lac St. Jean afterwards and there were no more problems. Hm. I’m thinking the puppy is somewhat spoiled 🙂

I drove back down yesterday after lunch, leaving Chantale and Casey there for the next two weeks. I picked up the kids and while driving home they asked what they were doing this week. I told them they’d be spending it with their grandparents and they if Casey could spend it there, too! I told them that Casey’s on vacation up at “Grandma’s” and that they would see her again in two weeks.

A little while later, they asked about Chantale and I told them that she was up with Casey. Melyssa immediately breaks down in big sobs crying that she misses her. I reassure her that they can call her any time they want and that in two weeks they’ll be spending the entire week with her while *I* work (the reverse of what we did two weeks ago) and that made them feel a little better.

At home, after getting ready for bed, I told the kids to get comfortable and not bother covering up since it was so hot in the house. Melyssa went to get the t-shirt Chantale got when she worked as a volunteer for the Montreal Children’s Hospital’s Family Day on Father’s Day and I asked if she wouldn’t be more comfortable in something much lighter. She again broke into tears with a “but I miss her!” and hugged the t-shirt. No problem! Okee-dokee into the tee! 🙂

Ah well. I better get back to work.